For a time, I got hooked on the Netflix reality show Married at First Sight.

The season I watched followed four couples who agreed to arranged marriages, meeting for the first time, sight unseen, on the day of their wedding.

Three relationship experts paired them from a large pool of applicants. The show followed these four couples for a period of two months — from the honeymoon to sharing an apartment for eight weeks — as they worked on achieving success in their day-to-day lives as a married couple. At the end of the season, the couples decide if they want to stay together or get a divorce. Crazy, right?

As a relationship and intimacy coach, I found it fascinating to watch these four couples do their best to achieve happiness together, with cameras on them for most of their waking hours! The challenges for each couple were different, but by the end of the season all four couples shared one problem: sex.

Within just a month of marriage these four couples had each already established unhealthy patterns leading to disconnection. For the purpose of this chapter, I’ll talk about two of the couples who dealt with a similar sexual dynamic. Both couples were struggling with sexual pursuit and resistance — a dynamic I often encounter with my clients.

Let’s look at these two couples.

The first couple, both in their late twenties, had a lot in common except for the fact that the woman was a 27-year-old virgin, saving herself for her husband. The man on the other hand was more sexually experienced.

I’m sure I wasn’t the only person fascinated with this scenario! Here was a woman who, for nearly thirty years, placed great importance on not having sex before marriage and yet was marrying and living with a total stranger for two months!

It was painful to watch the tension she held in her body with any initiation of sensuality or affection. She looked terrified to give up control and engage in intimacy of any kind. I felt bad for her that she now had to confront years of being in sexual shutdown, with no learned skills on how to access her own desire, then show that desire to her new husband.

And I felt bad for him, too, dealing with an emotionally and sexually inexperienced wife with an extreme amount of resistance to his patient advances. Looking past the unusual circumstance of living with a camera crew, the signs of their struggle were obvious and this was supported in their individual interviews as well.

The second couple had a similar dynamic, in that the 29-year-old woman had not been in a relationship for 10 years (since college). She struggled with being vulnerable and deflected her husband’s compliments and affection, even though she described him as her “perfect match”.

This man, as with the first couple, was also very patient. He would tiptoe around the edge of her comfort zone, hoping she might emotionally and physically open up to him — or at least throw him a few scraps of validation. He was constantly met with his wife’s guardedness. Their awkward tension impeded intimacy and vulnerability.

Both women planted their feet firmly on the brakes of sensuality. It was difficult for them to trust not only their new husbands but themselves as well — and their inherent desires. They didn’t know the path from “no” to “yes” within themselves.

Neither man really knew what to do to change their situation. They lacked the skills to tenderly seduce their women in a way that worked for them. They also seemed to lack the confidence to lead in order to soften and melt the resistance their wives were stuck in.

No one is born a master seducer. Thankfully, loving seduction is a skill that can be learned. The men were frustrated and looked confounded and defeated by their wives’ responses. They’d literally shake their heads in disappointment and turn out the lights, leaving their wives left in the dark feeling guilty, frustrated, and stuck in their own emotional quagmire.

A desire discrepancy quickly leads to a power struggle that ultimately undermines intimacy. This is the way sexual resistance for both partners gets set in place.

The lower-desire partner –with their foot on the breaks – holds the power, even though they often prefer not to. They struggle with guilt that they’re not meeting their partner’s needs. They resent feeling pressured to have sex, and they dislike feeling that every gesture of affection from their partner might only be a bid for sex. The power they hold over their partner depolarizes the relationship and ultimately undermines their mutual respect.

They’re so busy fending off sex that they don’t feel they have space to locate or generate their own desire. In other words, they’re so busy putting on their brakes that their foot never gets near the gas peddle.

The higher-desire partner ends up feeling disempowered and resentful. They’re often confused and deeply disappointed.

They want their partner to initiate more; they long to feel their partner’s desire. As for many higher desire partners, being desired is core to their sexual identity. They start feeling undesired and even undesirable. This undermines their confidence, which is felt by their partner, and arguments about sex add to their disconnection.

When and if they do have sex, they feel emotionally disconnected and unable to fully let go and enjoy themselves. Couples may avoid discussing sex because the topic is fraught with tension. These walls of protection keep a relationship feeling superficial and emotionally unfulfilling.

Is it any wonder why so many couples who find themselves in this push and pull dynamic, ending up wanting to avoid sex all together?

When we stop sharing our intimate and more vulnerable sides of ourselves, we feel our partner doesn’t really know us or see us for who we are. When we don’t feel seen, we no longer trust our partner with the deepest parts of our ourselves.

Seeking validation in our desirability can lead us to look to others whether that’s online, in person or just in our own minds. We make the choice to leave our partner behind in search for someone or something that can ease the pain.

This is often the time when couples reach out to me for sex and relationship coaching. They sense a sexual power struggle has a stranglehold on their ability to trust and be intimate with each other. They just don’t know the path forward. They’ll often have seen one or more couple therapists but may have danced around the subject of sex without really addressing the root of their problem.

Both partners are responsible for this dynamic, and both can take action to unravel it. There’s no recipe for this work. Each couple is unique. It’s like putting the pieces of a puzzle together.

Each piece of the puzzle is a new gesture, a new insight, a new pattern or action that interrupts an expected negative outcome and, in the end, these new pieces join together to reveal a new picture.

One puzzle piece might be honest communication. Others could be building trust, nonsexual touch, new sexual skills, understanding sexual polarity, intimacy building, seduction techniques, erotic explorations, and sharing of fantasies. Each piece of the puzzle connects to another until sex and intimacy is integrated as a valued part of the complete relationship picture.

I’m not suggesting that these two Married at First Sight couples were destined to live lives of quiet desperation or end up divorced, but the signs were there within the first weeks and months of their marriages, and unless they changed direction, their power struggles would ultimately dictate their sexual compatibility into the future.

As a sex and relationship coach watching this show I felt a little like an armchair sports fan reacting to failed conversations like a missed pass or a dropped ball.

By the time the last episode rolled along, I was a little sad to say goodbye to these couples, and I wished them all the best, hoping they’d get the help they needed to gain confidence, share honestly, and ultimately master the sport of long-term love and intimacy.

If you’re curious about how coaching might work in your relationship, reach out.

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